"Oneiric means 'dreamy', and the combination with Ocelot reminds me of
the way innovation happens: part daydream, part discipline," Shuttleworth blogged."Keep up the discipline and focus on the Narwhal, and let's direct our daydreaming to the Ocelot."

These are interesting times for Ubuntu. The company has been dealing with its own mini-PR crisis lately with debate raging over their attempts to share (some, but not all) revenue with the GNOME Banshee project. Ubuntu has also decided to move away from GNOME Shell which has also raised questions.

From a timing perspective Oneiric is also the last Ubuntu release ahead of the 12.04 Long Term Support release, so it will be the final attempt pre-LTS for Ubuntu to shake things up.